One of our clients makes a device that helps people’s hearts work better, allowing them to live more active lives. However significant, the fact that the device improves patients’ quality of life is not enough to set the product apart in the vast market of cardiovascular medical devices.
Now, if we add a few more key details—that the device is one of the first for a specific part of the heart that has gone untreated for a long time, and the population it can help is extremely vulnerable—a story starts to come together. It is (very simply):
- People were sick and had no solution.
- The device is one of the first to treat a “forgotten valve” in a difficult population.
- With the device, people who previously had very few options can now live longer, more active lives.
Both the first sentence of this blog and the bulleted list explain the device’s benefit to patients. But which will you remember? Likely the one that tells the story of what makes this device unique.
This series of three blogs will dig into storytelling’s place in the clinical world and how to use storytelling techniques to write, present, and talk about your healthcare product or service. Let’s start with a basic definition of clinical storytelling.
What does Merriam-Webster have to say?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of a story varies from a “widely circulated rumor” to “the plot of a narrative or dramatic work.” We are going with the first available definition: “an account of incidents or events.” When telling a story, you are recounting what happened.
Clinical could mean anything from an “act performed with precision” to “of, relating to, or conducted in or as if in a clinic.” “Clinical storytelling” expands on both of these definitions. We use “clinical” broadly to describe the world of medicine, where statements and facts are revered because human lives are often on the line. Medical technology, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, hospital and health systems, and health services companies must have their communication be exact, founded on science, and clear—clinical.
Combining clinical with storytelling, we get the following string of words: “How we recount a series of events within the world of medicine.”
2 reasons to bring storytelling into a clinical environment
Initially, “storytelling” and “clinical” may seem like opposites. “Storytelling” evokes giants climbing beanstalks and ghost tales around campfires. “Clinical” brings images of needles and gloves and operating tables. But, thinking strategically about how to tell a series of events can have a big impact in clinical environments. Storytelling can make messaging meaningful and motivating.
Reason #1: Meaning
Facts matter in medicine, as they should. But a patient or potential customer will not remember a series of facts once they walk away—they will remember the gist of a message, the meaning they have assigned to what they’ve heard. Remembering gist accurately is especially important in the clinical world, with applications in discharge instructions, presentations of crucial trial results, and more.
Storytelling can be harder than reciting a series of facts because it requires the teller to find the meaning before constructing their message. An analogy I’ve found helpful for this is a graphic created by Brandon Rossen and Karyn Lurie and later added to by Andreas von der Heydt (Figure 1). It shows facts as a pile of Lego bricks. You can sort each brick into like colors and line them up for a pretty display, but your audience will not understand what the pile of bricks means until you build them into something tangible.
Figure 1. Using Legos to explain the power of stories. Created by Brandon Rossen, Karyn Lurie, Andreas von der Heydt.
Stories help people understand why they need to care about an idea, whether it is a new device, a better way to track supplies through a hospital or reasons to invest in new equipment. In The Science of Storytelling, writer and scientist Will Storr explains that narratives can physically transport listeners into a state where their minds can be changed (Storr 198).1 Stories are meaning-making and change-enabling tools.
Reason #2: Motivation
Storytelling helps us grow in empathy, which motivates our work. In Made to Stick, brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath tell a story about a hospital that created a video from a patient’s physical perspective (the viewer sees what the patient sees). During part of the video, we lie on a gurney as disembodied voices speak a strange language somewhere above our heads. It’s disorienting, and the hospital staff who watched became passionate about fixing what they saw wrong in the video (Heath and Heath, 202).2
Clinical storytelling can also motivate people in the medical realm by reminding them of the broader picture of their work. Adding story elements to communication reminds physicians, nurses, engineers, salespeople, marketers—the whole cast and crew working with medical devices and healthcare systems—why they come to work each day. They are developing technology and working with individuals to help people live healthier lives.
More to come
How we present information in the clinical setting matters. Clinical storytelling, where we arrange a series of events thoughtfully and strategically without compromising their scientific integrity, can communicate meaning and motivate the listener in ways that straight facts cannot.
In the next blog, we’ll discuss creating a story from a jumble of information. Then, the final blog will cover practical ways to apply clinical storytelling to your work.
1Will Storr. The Science of Storytelling. Abrams Press, 2020.
2Heath Chip, and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Random House, 2008.
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